Acute, sensitive novel about a writer's psychic collapse. (The US edition has a different title - Dartmouth Park, which is far more Jane Austen than the contents.)

Featuring Ali Smith, Daisy Lafarge, K Patrick, et al.

This posthumous publication is based on the revisionist work Stamp did at the end of his life, arguing that interwar Britain was not just an era of intensifying modernism but saw an emergence of diverse styles.

Freud is the primary focus here, but we also encounter Klimt, Schiele, Herzl, Empress Sisi and many others in this fine account of the new understanding of the mind that arose from Vienna at this period.

An elucidating account of the conditions that led to, and subsequently shaped the Iraq war. This book casts a light on both CIA intrigue in the Middle East and Hussein's own political motivations and paranoia.

From Milton to Benton End: the idea of gardens unpicked, now that this agile cultural commentator has one of her own. Discursive and hugely enjoyable.

A dizzying tale of social collapse, generational impasse and mid-life crisis; a Bonfire of the Vanities set in London. Brilliantly observed, lean, slick, clever and gripping.

This fascinating account of a forgotten moment in history is part family memoir, part the telling of a Texan offshoot of the early Zionist movement, when 10,000 Jews set sail for Galveston before WW1. Formally inventive, the author weaves together fragments of primary source material (letters, diaries, newspaper articles, interviews) to create a seamless, vivid see more

The post-war eclipse of the rural by the urban. Joyce interweaves his own Irish family history into wider story of European peasantry to create a rich and varied cultural account of what it meant to be part of these communities. Fascinating.

The glorious Pan-European Picnic of 19th August 1989.

When everyone walked: the network of footpaths and bridleways that connected rural communities and criss-crossed the land unchanged for centuries until the dominance of the internal combustion engine in the C20th. First published in 1970, reissued by Little Toller

Anyone who read Christopher de Hamel's last book, or Alexandra Lapierre's novel Belle Greene, will know that the letters from Pierpont Morgan's mixed-race librarian/buyer to Berenson will be spirited.

A re-issue of McCarthy's brilliant memoir - so painful and unjust that Anita Brookner held that Jane Eyre had got away lightly in comparison. First published in 1957.

A sharp social satire set during a production of Coward's Blithe Spirit by the Midhurst am-dram society: expect some delicious narcissism.

An early novella, and an excellent introduction into MB's work, in which a 22-year old returns to Dublin from Paris after the death of her mother.

Buzzati, a journalist for much of his life, was celebrated for turning the events of mid-century Italy and beyond into absurdist, even nightmarish stories, gathered together here into a new NYRB edition.

This caustic, witty novel is set among migrants and lost souls in East London as they try to navigate the latest government policies; translated from the Arabic.

Unabridged new translation of one of the great works of C20th Italian fiction, first published in1948, set among three generations of Sicilian women.

Narrated by Mozart in three periods of his life: as a child in London, as an angst-ridden youth in Paris, and as a man in sight of his own death in Leipzig. Charlatans and aristocrats abound as Mozart's star rises; the composer himself is much occupied with the question of the possible murder of J.S. see more

Rosa Luxemburg, Charlotte Salomon and Marilyn Monroe are Rose's first focus in this far-sighted and tightly-reasoned exploration of women's lives. Feminism at its most elegant and intelligent? A re-issue from Fitzcarraldo.